Shorter version of "Jefferson and America 4.0" for XARK readers with actual jobs and/or lives

I wrote my last post more for me than for anyone else, because it's just godawful long. Here it is, in more considerate list form, for you, dear readers:

1. Jeffersonian Democracy makes for good rhetoric, but it's wholy unsuited for modern America.
2. Jefferson, God love him, was a much better philosopher than an actual political leader.
3. Jefferson's "yeoman farmers" don't exist anymore, and a political model based on individual self-sufficiency not only fails to describe our current situation, it actually leads us to terrible policies.
4. Civilization works by increasing stability, which increases complexity, which increases wealth. A back-to-basics conservative impulse is a recipe for distaster. 
5. Jeffersonian Democracy was more-or-less the soul of America 1.0 
6. (The Articles of Confederation were our beta test)
7. America 2.0 began during the Civil War
8. America 3.0 began with the New Deal and ended in the fall of 2008
9. America 4.0 is what comes next
10. America 4.0 is likely to be about sustainable economics based on a sharing of risks and rewards across the society.
11. Economic philosophies that suggest bad banks and companies should be allowed to fail misunderstand the value of the economy to the society. Value exists not on balance sheets, but within the complexity of the economy itself. 
12. The age of extraction economics is ending.
13. The way back to prosperity requires companies to share the same risks and rewards as the people. If the risks are borne only by the people and the rewards belong solely to the elite, then disaster will follow... as it just did.
14. Republicans and Libertarians do a great job of winning arguments by quoting Jefferson. To usher in America 4.0, Democrats must learn to rebut those romantic arguments with a new message about the realities and benefits of an interconnected world.

Happy Presidents Day.

Comments

[Joyce Sasser]

Ok...so now get THAT to Obama and the economic team along with a request for an audience and time to talk! The problems continue to be getting the people (like me)to understand such things that are WAY out of their realm and away from the great Jeffersonian rhetoric they know ....getting first the new admin and then the people to grasp this is the job ahead.....go for it Dan!